The Correspondents

Six Women Writers on the Front Lines of World War II

By: Judith Mackrell

Narrated by: Julie Teal

The riveting, untold history of a group of heroic women reporters who revolutionized the narrative of World War II—from Martha Gellhorn, who out-scooped her husband, Ernest Hemingway, to Lee Miller, a Vogue cover model turned war correspondent.

"Thrilling from the first page to the last."—Mary Gabriel, author of Ninth Street Women

"Just as women are so often written out of war, so it seems are the female correspondents. Mackrell corrects this omission admirably with stories of six of the best…Mackrell has done us all a great service by assembling their own fascinating stories."—New York Times Book Review

On the front lines of the Second World War, a contingent of female journalists were bravely waging their own battle. Barred from combat zones and faced with entrenched prejudice and bureaucratic restrictions, these women were forced to fight for the right to work on equal terms with men.

The Correspondents follows six remarkable women as their lives and careers intertwined: Martha Gellhorn, who got the scoop on Ernest Hemingway on D-Day by traveling to Normandy as a stowaway on a Red Cross ship; Lee Miller, who went from being a Vogue cover model to the magazine’s official war correspondent; Sigrid Schultz, who hid her Jewish identity and risked her life by reporting on the Nazi regime; Virginia Cowles, a “society girl columnist” turned combat reporter; Clare Hollingworth, the first English journalist to break the news of World War II; and Helen Kirkpatrick, the first woman to report from an Allied war zone with equal privileges to men.

From chasing down sources and narrowly dodging gunfire to conducting tumultuous love affairs and socializing with luminaries like Eleanor Roosevelt, Picasso, and Man Ray, these six women are captured in all their complexity. With her gripping, intimate, and nuanced portrait, Judith Mackrell celebrates these courageous reporters who risked their lives for the scoop.

©2021 Judith Mackrell (P)2021 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

*Finalist for the 2022 Sperber Book Prize*

“Not only did female journalists face the challenges and dangers of actually reporting the war, but first they had to battle even to be allowed to cover it. Barred from combat zones, they had to hitchhike to the front line and struggled to get assignments from editors, some of whom fielded complaints from readers who did not want their news to come from women correspondents…Just as women are so often written out of war, so it seems are the female correspondents. Mackrell corrects this omission admirably with stories of six of the best…Mackrell has done us all a great service by assembling their own fascinating stories.”—New York Times Book Review

"The six women who form the focus of Judith Mackrell’s The Correspondents...were a formidable bunch....A powerful and convincing picture of the overwhelming struggle these women—and others like them—were forced to endure to make themselves heard."—Wall Street Journal

"Gripping...It is no easy feat to weave six lives into a narrative that compels the reader all the way through, but like a big-canvas painting that brings together personal dramas and machinations of state, The Correspondents is full of intriguing detail."—The Los Angeles Review of Books

A way to learn about female war correspondents of WW11

I learn much about the female war correspondents of WW-2 by listening to this book- you will too.

The only real negative is the regularly reading of the foot notes through out the entire book. Not only was the reading of foot notes not important but Annoying as well.
I enjoyed the book even with this mistake of the author.

Very important historical book

I was born in 1944 and thus had no direct knowledge of the war. I have done much reading about the war but thus book was instrumental in filling in many gaps in my knowledge. I really did enjoy the book and it's bringing together of the many stories of the women in this book

A riveting account of women WWII journalists

A riveting and thought provoking biography of several women, who would not be stopped by chauvinism, bureaucracy, or fear, as they took extraordinary professional and personal risks to cover WWII stories across the globe.

good book - not good reader

great story but at times it's hard to keep the characters straight. the reader's American voices ar terrible. does she think we all flattened our vowels?

Good material but scattered presentation

I like getting the information this book imparts. As a woman, it's good to know things that weren't common knowledge about women involved in journalism in that excessively chauvinistic era of crucial world history. But the way the account shifts from one female reporter to another, though sometimes smooth and sometimes due to the non-linear calendaring of the coverage, is sometimes difficult to follow since listening to the book was broken up into several sessions for me. It was hard to keep straight which information went with which woman. Maybe it's easier to keep it straight when one reads the book.

A HUGE problem with this book is the narrator's attempts at American accents, as well as French ones. She clearly misses the boat when feigning a St. Louis (which, by the way, is pronounced "Loo-iss" and not Lou-ee") accent, and her other attempts (maybe?) at regional American accents are just off the wall. Whoever was responsible for that aspect should definitely go back and redo those parts. Several times I wanted to stop listening because the accents and intonations were aggravatingly contrived. But there's also a strained and emphatic tone in her voice when she tries to sound American, which is really distracting from the content. Some Brits think they can achieve an American accent with an exaggerated "R." No, we don't "roll" it in American English. That's Spanish and Italian. We merely pronounce it. Also, we don't add it onto the end of words like "idea" and "pizza." That's strictly for a certain segment of New Yorkers, many of whom know they have to overcome that habit if they want to speak proper American English.

I stuck it through due to interest in the author's well-researched material. The stories of these groundbreaking women were truly interesting. But I would NOT recommend this audio version to anyone who has sensitive hearing.

Narration was nails on a chalkboard

The subject matter is great and the writing enjoyable. I was so excited about this book I preordered it. The narration was horrible. The weird shifts in tone, pronunciation, and accent were nausea inducing. Was she trying to do a generic American accent? It almost put me off finishing the book.

Fascinating!

Riveting and inspiring read about extraordinary women forging new pathways for all women. A great book!

Learning more about brave women in general, and their particular perspectives on last century war events, was totally gratifying

Enjoy every correspondent’s ‘foreign’ accent — the reader is excellent! Enjoy every specific detail!

Enjoy every moment!

A marvelous book to read

These are fabulous and exciting stories of wartime and the brave intrepid women journalists who tried to pry their way into a male dominated world to get their stories.
However, and it’s a big warning, the perfectly nice British reader has a terrible, embarrassing fake American accent that she adopts to tell the American journalists’ side of things. I dreaded listening to each as the narrator makes all the Americans sound like midwestern hog callers with head colds! Better buy the hardcover.

Terrible narration / good book

This was a terrific book - fascinating and inspiring stories of these dynamic and fearless women.
The narration though is just awful - spoiled by the British narrator’s
bizarre version ofAmerican accents. The atrocious accent was made much worse by the weird and grating tone of voice and manner of speaking which she shifted to when trying to sound American.
This narrator should NEVER again do a reading which requires an American accent.